BASILIO G. GODINEZ, TECIA, GREGORIA, TRANQUILINO AND CONCEPCION, ALL SURNAMED GODINEZ AND PEDRO JAYME, PETITIONERS, VS. COURT OF APPEALS, PEDRO PATALINGHUG, MAMERTO IGOT, LORENZ…

On January 31, 1929 the Court of
First Instance of Cebu, acting as a cadastral court,
rendered a decision adjudicating lot No. 655 of the Opon
Cadastre to seven persons or groups of persons, but erroneously gave
each adjudicatee an undivided one-sixth part
of the property.  In view thereof, and of
the fact that the civil status of some of the adjudicatees
was not specified, the corres­ponding decree of registration could not be
issued.  To correct the error the petitioners
here filed a motion in cadastral record on January 7, 1967, claiming that they are the legitimate descendants
and heirs of Carmeling Godinez,
one of a group of several persons to whom a portion of the aforesaid lot had
been adjudicated.  Herein private respond­ents
opposed the motion, but the trial court overruled the opposition and in an
order dated May 10, 1967 directed that the 1929 decision be amended accordingly.  On June 16, 1967 the same court issued another order, this time for
the issuance of a final decree of registration by the Land Registration
Commissioner.  Respondents moved to
reconsider both orders, but were turned down on August 17, 1967.

On August 25, 1967 respondents filed their notice of appeal and appeal
bond. The record on appeal was likewise filed and thereafter transmitted to the
Court of Appeals, where the appellees, now
petitioners herein, moved to dismiss the appeal on several grounds.  The appellate court denied the motion, as
well as a subsequent motion to reconsider the order of denial, and petitioners
came to us on the instant petition for certiorari, prohibition and mandamus,
asking that the orders of the Court of Appeals be set aside and that the said
Court be directed to dismiss the appeal of respondents.

The grounds relied upon in the
petition are: (1) that the record on appeal fails to show on its face that the
appeal was perfected within the reglementary period,
in violation of Section 6 of Rule 41; (2) that the record on appeal does not
specify the full names of all the parties, contrary to the same provision of
the Rules; (3) that the printed record on appeal does not contain the order of
the trial court approving the amended record on appeal and directing its
transmittal to the Court of Appeals; (4) that the printed record on appeal does
not contain a certificate of the Clerk of the trial court that he had verified
the correctness of the contents; (5) that the decision in the main case
(rendered in 1929) had already become final and unappealable;
(6) that the orders subject of the appeal are merely interlocutory and hence
not appealable; that the omit­ted pleadings as
pointed out by petitioners in their opposi­tion to the approval of the record
on appeal are not properly indicated in the amended record on appeal; and (7)
and that certain annexes (A,B, C and D) of said opposition are not included in
the said record.

We now proceed to consider the
foregoing grounds seriatim:

(1) Petitioners’
averment on the first point is not accurate. 
It is premised on the assumption that the record on appeal shows on its
face that it was filed only on September
13, 1967, which date is admittedly beyond the reglementary
period.  However, what was filed on that
date was the amended record on appeal; the original record on appeal was filed
on August 25, 1967 well
within the said period.+ This date is sufficiently
indicated on the face of the printed record on appeal by means of the following
statement on page 107 thereof:

“x x x
That on August 31, 1967 the oppositors through
undersigned counsel received the opposition to the Record on Appeal filed
August 25, 1967, as follows:

“OPPOSITION TO RECORD
ON APPEAL

FILED AUGUST 25, 1967″

x        x          x

As may be noted, the filing of the
record on appeal by herein respondents on August 25, 1967, is admitted by
petitioners in their opposition thereto; and the fact that said opposition is
reproduced in the record constitutes a substantial compliance with the
requirement of Section 6, Rule 41, that the record shall include “such
data as will show that the appeal was perfected on time.”

(2) Petitioners
claim that the full names of the parties are not stated in the caption of the
record on appeal, as required by the same provision of the Rules.  The claim is not true, since the names of the
parties involved in the incident subject of the appeal are set out both on the
cover page of the printed record on appeal and on the caption immediately
preceding the subject-index, although not repeated just before the main body of
the record itself, where the caption reads merely “The Director of Lands
versus Eulalia Agujai, et
al.,” to identify the cadastral case under which the lot in question was
originally adjudicated. (3 and 4).  The omission in the printed record on appeal
of the order of the trial court approving the same and of the certification of
the Clerk of Court that he had verified the correctness of its contents is not
a fatal defect and does not constitute one of the grounds upon which the appeal
may be dismissed, as enumerated in Section 1 of Rule 50.  Petitioners do not deny that the record on
appeal was duly approved, or that its contents as printed are correct.  Indeed respondents have submitted as annexes
to their answer a certified true copy each of the order of approval issued by
the trial court and the certification of correctness signed by the Clerk,
showing compliance with the correspond­ing provisions found, in Section 7 and
10, respectively, of Rule 41. Respondents also allege that similar annexes were
submitted by them to the Court of Appeals in connection with their opposition
to the motion to dismiss the appeal, and said allegation is not controverted. (5 and 6).  It is true that the decision rendered in the
main cadastral case in 1929 has long become final and unappealable,
but the appeal now before the Court of Appeals is not from that decision but,
from the order of the trial Court of May 10, 1967 direct­ing certain
corrections therein, as well as from the order of June 16, 1967, for the
issuance of a final decree of regis­tration. 
These orders are not interlocutory in nature, and whether they are justified
or not is precisely the issue that must be threshed
out in the appeal.  (7) The omission a
certain pleadings and of the annexes to the opposition of petitioners to the
approval of the record on appeal is not of itself a ground for the dismissal of
the appeal, there being no showing, either here or in the Court of Appeals in
connection with the motion to dismiss therein, that said pleadings and annexes
are necessary for a proper understand­ing and resolution of the issues.

WHEREFORE, the writs prayed for are hereby denied, with costs
against petitioners.

Concepcion, C.J., Dizon,
Zaldivar, Ruiz Castro, Fernando, Teehankee,
and Villamor, JJ., concur.

Reyes, JBL  and
Barredo, JJ., did not
take part.

+ The other material dates which
serve as bases of computation are not controverted
and are shown on the record on appeal.